


Harbinger

by Drew_scribbles



Category: Evil Dead (Movies), Friday the 13th Series (Movies), House on Haunted Hill (1999), Pet Sematary - Stephen King, Poltergeist (1982), The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Horror, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drew_scribbles/pseuds/Drew_scribbles
Summary: In horror movies, there's always that creepy guy at the gas station warning the youths about the cabin in the woods, or the haunted house, or the abandoned insane asylum.  I've always wondered what that guy's story was: who is he?  Why is he running a gas station in the middle of nowhere?  Is he really creepy, or is that just the way that a bunch of overreacting teenagers see him?  Well, I call him George, and this is his story.





	Harbinger

Harbinger  
by: Andrew Slinde

George stepped out into the fresh, summer morning and lit one of his Camel non-filters with tobacco stained fingers. He took a long drag and looked up and down the dusty road that passed the filling station. It was gonna be a scorcher today, he thought, but business was bound to be good; it always was, first day of summer.

He unfolded his ladder and climbed up to change the gas signs. George had called down to Scarville about half an hour ago, the truck stop down there, and the night clerk had read him off the gas prices, unconcerned that he might be any kind of competition. No, his daddy had built the filling station on the old stretch of highway back when it was the premier road from Scarville to anywhere, but when they built the freeway only ten miles away, this was back in '59, it had taken a lot of business away from the old gas station. Now, George's old place thrived for only three months a year, during the summertime.

Even after the freeway, the old highway was still the only inlet to a lot of the summer attractions around here. There was Lake Claire, where the kids went to summer camp and the teenagers got sent by their parents to be camp counselors – he'd get busloads of kids come in steady from the second week of June to the early part of August. The hills up north were peppered with old cabins, inevitably owned by somebody's uncle or cousin, and ultimately getting lent to six college students on their way to cut loose after a long year of studying. Also up north, the old Marsten place stood in ruins at the top of Cairnstone Bluff, and Marigold Gardens, the abandoned mental hospital, was only a few miles up the road from that; both were popular destinations for local ghost hunters or film students looking to make another Blair Witch thingamabob. And that's not to mention the old Native American burial grounds, where distraught fathers would often drive – with dubious trash bags in their back seats – in hopes of a miracle.

What all those places had in common was that they were only accessible by the old highway that ran past George's station, so during those summer months George raked it in hand over fist. He was a pretty simple guy, and he had to make a living, so he never really questioned why people kept coming to his station but never seemed to make the return trip. He also never questioned why each busload of kids or van full of half-drunk college kids were followed by a host of sheriff's deputies and the local volunteer ambulance. Of course, this also meant more business for George: he made sure to keep the donuts fresh and the coffee hot after anyone headed up that way.

As he was changing the sign – speak of the devil – an RV pulled into the lot and up to the old gas pump. George looked down and saw the pack of twenty-somethings all pile out of the car, bleary eyed and sleepy from their all-night drive. After a while, the kids all tended to blur together into a single archetype, and it never failed. You had the sporty guy, the street kid, the bookish kid, the nerdy girl, the shy ordinary girl, and the free spirited girl in the skimpy little outfits. About ten years ago, one out of the whitebread group had been vaguely ethnic, but as time went on George noticed that the groups were becoming more and more inclusive and bucked the usual stereotypes. In this group, the bookish kid was the black guy (back in the nineties the black guy was usually the street kid) and the free spirited girl was Korean – he knew how to pick 'em out since his daddy had brought home his Korean half-sister from the war.

They hadn't noticed him changing the sign, but the sporty guy started filling the tank while the free spirit and the shy girl stretched as if some invisible audience was watching from beyond a broken fourth wall. The others flooded into the gas station, some going to the restrooms, others browsing the shelves. George climbed down off his ladder, crushed out his cigarette under his heel, and went into the station.

As usual, the few kids not using the restroom had wandered where they shouldn't. It never failed, and George never understood the compulsion: the kids always walked by the coolers full of beer and soda and fancy energy drinks or the racks of candy and chips, making a beeline for the back room, one of his private rooms. George both lived and worked at the filling station, his cramped little two bedroom apartment taking up one wing of the station, and when you worked out in the middle of nowhere, you had to have hobbies: it kept you from going cuckoo during the long off-season months. With so much wilderness, it only made sense to do some trapping and taxidermy. Naturally, that and his one bad eye usually made him “creepy”. Kids these days. Kids any days.

“Can I help you kids?” George asked from the doorway of his taxidermy room.

The bookish kid and the nerdy girl spun around and jumped in frightened surprise. That never failed either, and George always imagined it happening to the sound of a discordant violin note or the crash of a cymbal or something else dramatic. It made him smile.

“Um...no...no,” the nerdy girl said, edging around him and out the doorway. “I'm sorry. We...were just...”

“Just looking,” the bookish guy said. “I mean, for you. We were looking for you. You know, to pay for the gas.”

George knew they were scared of him, but he didn't blame them. You couldn't be too careful these days, especially when you thought about what happened in those places up north. Besides, telling him that he was harmless was exactly what a creepy psycho killer would say, so he just let it go. He knew he wasn't the prettiest guy out there – old and in a pair of oil-stained overalls, one bad eye staring out into nothing much, patchy bald spots. Still, this generation – like the generation of young folks before it – hadn't ever been taught any manners or respect. To George though, simple guy that he was, they were customers.

“The register's that way,” George said, pointing out the obvious and directing them away from his personal space. The door was marked “private”, how much clearer did he need to be?

The kids converged on the place, picking out armloads of snacks and drinks, a case of beer, a bag of ice, and one of the disposable Styrofoam coolers he'd had the foresight to order in this year. They paid for their gas and chatted nervously with each other while they threw frightened, sheepish glances at George. He rung them up and took their money, right enough, and tried not to get his feelings hurt. Kids treated him this way – it just happened. The point was that he was still in business and he only had to put up with it a few months out of the year.

While they were finishing their purchases, George couldn't help but feel kind of sorry for them. He was only vaguely aware of what happened at those places up north, but he knew he'd never see those kids again. “Where you youngsters heading?” he asked, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

As usual, this failed. The sporty guy tried to look tough and challenged him with a hard stare. “Why do you wanna know?” he asked. The free spirit in the skimpy outfit tucked herself neatly into the crook of his arm, looking at George with big doe eyes.

“Just making conversation,” George replied, ringing up the beer. He scrutinized the young people, then said, “I don't suppose one of you's got ID.”

Now their fear shifted from him to something far worse – the prospect of not having beer. The kids huddled together, had a heated, whispered conversation, then the shy girl was pushed forward with her driver's license in hand. “Um...here you go,” she said.

George took the ID and examined it. It was the girl's photo alright, and it was from out of state – in fact, it was from outside the tri-state area. Also, George did the math and figured the ID claimed that the girl was thirty-seven. An obvious fake.

As quietly and discreetly as they could – which wasn't very quietly or discreet – the other youngsters urged her to start talking to him, hoping to distract him from the fake ID. “Um..” she said, “we're going up to Johnny's cousin's place in the woods up north.”

George nodded and handed the ID back to her. He didn't much care it was a fake – he hadn't gotten stung by the police in over a decade and even then it was by accident. “That's twenty-two fifty,” he said. Then, he added, “You wanna be careful up to those places. I see a lot folks go that way and not any of them come back.”

He imagined another discordant violin string or crash of cymbals as all the kids gasped or went wide eyed. The sporty guy tried to make himself look bigger. “What's that supposed to mean?” he asked.

Why did they always think he was threatening them? “I'm just telling you what I see,” George replied, giving up. He warned them all, in one way or another, that those places up north were dangerous. There was something in those woods, his daddy had always said, and it was their sacred duty to warn people about it – to be good harbingers, as his daddy called it. Still, it never worked. George sagged a little and gave the shy girl her change. “Y'all have a nice trip,” he said, turning away to stock the cigarettes.

When he turned back they were already gone.

“It's a damn shame,” the deputy said, about eighteen hours later. He was eating a donut and sipping a cup of hot black coffee. George had made it fresh just an hour before the emergency services arrived.

Two paramedics were waiting outside. One of them was being sick into one of George's outside trashes.

“Wasn't much left of them, afterward,” the deputy went on. “The coroner said it was probably wolves, maybe a bear. Least, that's what the report will say.”

George was restocking the coffee bar with his back to the deputy. “I don't much want to know, Earl,” he said. “I warn 'em every time,” he added, crestfallen. “I told 'em people go up there don't come back.”  
“I know, George,” the deputy, Earl, replied. He patted him on the back. “Welp, we'd better get these kids sorted out and get to contacting their next of kin. See you soon, George.”

“I hope not,” George said.

Earl just laughed and left. A bus full of girl scouts pulled up half and hour later, and George stopped mopping the floor long enough for history to repeat itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! If you like this story you can check out my wordpress at drewscribbles.wordpress.com (it's free, I don't monetize) to read more.


End file.
